


the closing walls (the ticking clocks)

by thedarknesswithin (babylxxrry)



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Meet-Cute, Pre-Relationship, but not really cute idk, see notes for tw/cw things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 14:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18593410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/pseuds/thedarknesswithin
Summary: Misha stares at the ceiling. His eyes burn, but he can’t find the energy to close them when he knows he has to be up in a little over an hour. He doesn’t know why he bothered to set his alarm for 5:00 when he knows he won’t be out of bed until the literal last minute. He tries to kick his legs off, down to the ground so he can get up and get some of his work done before he has to go into class with a half-finished, half-assed paper to do peer reviews with. His legs don’t cooperate.Right.This is why.[misha has a shit day that isn't all shit]





	the closing walls (the ticking clocks)

**Author's Note:**

> small tw for passing mention of homophobia 
> 
> tried a new stylistic thing. curious as to what yall think :D
> 
> written for a friend who had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. love u, hope this makes it just a tiny bit less bad.

5:49

Misha stares at the ceiling. His eyes burn, but he can’t find the energy to close them when he knows he has to be up in a little over an hour. He doesn’t know why he bothered to set his alarm for 5:00 when he knows he won’t be out of bed until the literal last minute. He tries to kick his legs off, down to the ground so he can get up and get some of his work done before he has to go into class with a half-finished, half-assed paper to do peer reviews with. His legs don’t cooperate.

Right.

This is why.

He grabs his phone from the nightstand, squinting blearily at the screen. He rolls his eyes at himself when he opens Instagram and Twitter and VK and nothing has changed since he last checked twenty minutes ago. He _knows_ nothing’s going to change at this hour. He doesn’t know why he bothers. He turns the phone off and stares at the ceiling again. Sometimes he wishes he’d gotten a double, because then at least he’d have something to listen to. His single offers only claustrophobic walls and the rumbling white noise of his fan blowing softly.

He wishes he cared enough to do something about the impending headache lurking threateningly just behind his eyes. But he doesn’t. So he turns on his side and stares at the wall instead.

7:00

Misha’s alarm, the real one, goes off. He needs to get up and shower. Who the fuck decided it was a good idea to take a class before 10? Right. His own dumb ass.

He’s gotten maybe half an hour of dozing, and his eyelids are sore when he presses them closed. He desperately needs sleep, he knows, but he can’t seem to find the energy to devote to shutting his thoughts off long enough to do so.

He watches the numbers tick up on his clock, a tiny knot of panic coiling in his stomach as he starts to think about everything that’s due today that he hasn’t done yet.

7:10 _Essay for McCarron_

7:13 _Extra credit for Wingdings_

7:14 _His name isn’t actually Wingdings but everyone calls him that because he’s about as cryptic, if not more. At least his courses are straightforward and easy passes._

7:20 _Forty minutes until class. Showers take twenty. The walk across campus is another fifteen. Get up, Misha._

7:25 _This is the last minute you can get up and be on time, dumbass. You still have to clobber together the Works Cited for Johnson, and get in contact with that girl who sits behind you on the shuttle to your Friday class because you need a partner for that project. She’s nice, right?_

7:29 _Okay, so maybe no shower. You have another 16 minutes and you can still be on time._

Misha vaguely thinks he should probably eat breakfast, but it’s not like he’s been eating breakfast regularly the past few months anyways. He’ll grab a coffee after class. It’ll be fine.

7:44

He stares at the clock as it slowly, slowly ticks over.

7:45 _Get up, dumbass, you won’t make it to class._

7:46 Misha’s heart surges and he throws his blanket off, throwing the day’s books into his backpack and pulling on an old sweatshirt over his shirt. He half-searches for a more decent pair of pants, but fuck it, he doesn’t care if people see him in his three-day-old sweatpants. He doesn’t have the energy to.

 

8:03

Misha slides into his seat just as McCarron starts his presentation. He pulls his laptop out and ends up tuning out of the lecture entirely, fucking around with old pictures he’d taken on a day out with his friends. He misses his high school years, as odd as that sounds. At least he’d genuinely enjoyed being around people who he’d been close with, even if the academics were less than satisfying. The issue now is that the academics continue to be less than satisfying, no matter how hard he tries to stay engaged in most of his classes, and now, he’s away from most of his friends. He has a couple here, yeah, but they’re nowhere near as close as some of his old friends, and he finds that he misses them a lot more than he’d anticipated.

“Mikhail?” McCarron’s voice snaps Misha out of his thoughts, and he startles when he sees McCarron staring at him.

“Sorry?”

“You’re presenting today, remember?”

 

8:15

Misha’s pretty sure he’s never felt more humiliated in his life, standing in front of thirty people bullshitting about how something he’s kind of familiar with is directly related to something he’s barely read about, and how that relationship implies the existence of… something. He’s not even entirely sure he remembers what the original topic was, only that he’d done brief notes on it back when it’d been assigned weeks ago with the intent of wrapping it up as the date got closer. And of course, he’d forgotten. He also knows there’s stains on his clothes and dark circles under his eyes, and the smile McCarron had given him after had just added insult to injury. The smile said, _you tried, Mikhail, you tried and you bombed it and you’d better get me that paper before the weekend._ Misha had slunk back to his seat, packed his shit up, and left the moment the clock hit 8:15, lecture ending be damned.

He can’t decide how he’s feeling as he drags himself across the quad for Wingdings’ class. He’s not sure what Wingdings’ real name is at this point. Wingdings has, in the past, actually referred to himself as Wingdings in class, but Misha’s not entirely clear on how that happened or why.

 

11:00

He has a free period from now until 12:30. He usually uses the time to get homework done, but his stomach growls at him and he sighs, turning his path to the cafeteria. He’ll grab a coffee and get working.

 

11:20

Misha carries his plate to the dining room, which is packed with chatter and laughter. He surveys the room for a free seat, eventually finding a secluded corner with a single unoccupied table. He stares down at the full plate of food he’s gotten, and realizes that he’s not going to have time to both eat and work.

It’s but the work of a moment to sacrifice work. He’ll do it in the afternoon.

He looks out at the sea of students. Normally, he avoids big crowds because he hates how he feels like he’s breathing in their air and brushing shoulders with every stranger on campus and how it’s just overwhelming as hell to be bombarded with so much information, but right now? It’s like he’s seeing the world through a window. People are debating something on a powerpoint at the table to his left. Someone steals food from their partner. A girl in Misha’s Tuesday/Thursday class walks by, engrossed in the video chat she has on her phone. She almost runs into a guy from Misha’s Friday class, mumbles an apology, keeps walking. The guy turns and stares at her ass as she walks away, and his friend smacks his arm, dragging him away. Creep.

Misha’s never felt more alone in his life.

 

13:45

Today is a day of ultimate disasters, Misha thinks as he storms out of Smith’s class. It’s just one thing after another after another after another and he’s _this close_ to losing it. The problem is that he doesn’t know if he’s going to lose it in anger or in tears, and he doesn’t want to be around people for either of them.

He keeps walking fast, ignoring the headache that’s matured into a full pounding across the front of his head, letting the thump of his backpack across his lower back soothe him into some semi-trance. He ends up in one of the freshman quads. He watches some of them bounce in and out of their dorms, the brisk spring air making them all giddy and happy despite finals looming close. Oh, if only they knew. If only they knew.

 

14:08

A boy walks out of the building closest to Misha, and from the back, he looks so much like someone Misha hasn’t thought about in so long. It’s like someone’s taken a pin and just barely _tapped_ a balloon, because suddenly everything comes crashing in and Misha turns, walking back the way he came, sobbing his fucking eyes out. He’s such a fucking disaster, he can’t even keep himself from reacting to something from _years_ ago. He should have been over it, but he supposes maybe one never really gets over being beaten and then kicked out of one’s home for a rumor that one was caught with one’s hand down the pants of someone of the same gender. It’s not like the rumor _hadn’t_ been true, but Misha and that boy had been so much more than fuckbuddies. And Misha had ended it then to protect that boy, because he deserved so much more than a boyfriend with no family, no home, and no dignity.

“ _Shit_ ,” someone hisses, and Misha freezes. He’s on the pavement, somehow, and so is another guy. Misha doesn’t recognize him. A freshman, maybe, or a sophomore. Misha doesn’t know at this point.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” Misha says frantically, getting up off the ground and going over to the boy on the ground. He extends a hand. “I’m really sorry, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

The boy just stares at Misha.

“Um,” Misha says, and the boy blinks.

“Oh, uh,” the boy clears his throat. “Uh, your hand is, um, bleeding?”

Misha looks at his palm, and sure enough, he’s got a nice-sized scrape there, and now that he’s thinking about it, his other palm and at least one knee are also bleeding, and that’s just a _great_ addition to his day, isn’t it?

“Sorry,” Misha says again, taking a step back.

The boy pushes himself up, seeming to take stock of his hands and feet. “Don’t worry about it, man.” He runs a hand through his hair, fluffing it up. “Hey, just keep an eye out next time, alright?”

Misha doesn’t mean to drop into a crouch and bury his face in his hands, blood notwithstanding, but he does, because all of a sudden his knees just decide they don’t want to work, and his tear ducts start off again. He fucking hates it. He fucking hates himself.

“Are you okay?” The boy’s sneakers appear in the edge of Misha’s limited view. They’re new and shiny. Nike, if the fraction of logo he can see is right.

The question makes Misha cry harder. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he’s okay. Actually, he knows he’s not, but he has no idea how to make himself okay, and he has no idea how to keep pretending he’s okay even though he can barely finish his work and get out of bed and eat and stay clean and hydrated even _some_ days, let alone most days.

Unexpected warmth seeps into Misha’s skin and he realizes the boy is _hugging_ him, crouched awkwardly next-to-slash-in-front-of him. He can’t help but to sink into the contact, letting go of what little remains of his composure as he cries into the chest of a complete stranger, who’s stroking his back soothingly and smells like deodorant and detergent and warmth and grass.

It’s good.

It helps.

 

14:43

“I’m really sorry,” Misha says very belatedly, as he and the boy collect their things and get ready to go on their ways.

“No, don’t worry about it! I wasn’t heading to class anyways.” The boy shrugs.

“I’m still sorry, you shouldn’t have seen that. I swear, I don’t know what happened,” Misha lies, because he knows exactly what happened, and it shouldn’t have, because he should have been able to hang onto himself better.

The boy quirks a smile at Misha. “It’s not a bad thing to be a damsel in distress sometimes. It’s edifying to us knights out there.”

Misha scrunches up his nose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The boy shakes his head. “Fuck if I know. I don’t know, man, it’s been a long week.”

“Oh believe me, I know.”

“You wanna grab dinner tonight? I have another class in like twenty minutes but then I’m out for the rest of the day.”

“Oh, um.” Misha knows he has a lot of shit to finish tonight, but maybe this is good for him, to even spend a meal with someone new and different. “Yeah.”

“I’ll give you my number,” the boy says, pulling out his phone and passing it to Misha. “Put your number and I’ll text you.”

Misha does, gingerly cradling the phone so it doesn’t touch his scraped palms. He needs to get those cleaned up, probably.

“I’m Nathan, by the way, but literally no one calls me that. Just Nate works.”

“Misha,” Misha says.

“Well, Misha, I’ll text you later?” Nate asks, starting to walk backwards.

Misha nods.

Nate waves.

Misha thinks the walk back to his dorm doesn’t feel quite as dreadful.

He needs a shower.                                                                                                  

 

//

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed, want to see more, or just want to give misha a hug!
> 
> also! i purposefully left the old relationship thing ambiguous so was the other boy nate? up to you to decide :P  
> ((but what i had in mind was that it wasn't, though i could easily picture it as nate))


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